Forgotten Embodied Energy?

I recently saw a feature on a television morning news program declaring that dishwashers were more environmentally friendly than using a bowl to wash up in because over a week they used less hot water. This 'rough' science did not include the manufacture of the machine, the transport from China and the disposal/ recycling of it, nor take into account the production and environmental impact of those, clean all surface, dishwasher tablets. The humble washing up bowl and a squirt of Ecover came a poor second.

This week the government announced in the budget, that there was to be a new car tax banding, based on the emissions of your car. This is designed to be an incentive to buy a less emitting car. On the surface, this seems laudable but after some thought it occurred to me that if you are in a position to buy a £40,000 4 wheel drive etc would an extra £200 a year in road tax make you choose a smaller/ more efficient model. I doubt it. If you did, your old emitting car would be passed along to someone else thats probably not in a position to buy a new car. This in turn means that his car is also passed along. This of course happens all the time but are we in danger of creating cars that are old before their time, and do not fulfill their potential lifespan. We actually end up with more cars. I know of someone who recently bought a 9 year Rover with 50,000 miles on the clock with MOT for £50.

Now thinking about the embodied energy of making a car and disposing/recycling of it, as in the dishwasher example above, are we actually creating more emissions by producing new cars rather than keeping the existing ones going. We have a 19 year old Peugeot 205 which is still one of the most fuel efficient cars around (including newer models) so we keep that going! We are being penalized for this. We are also providing business for our local mechanics. This, I admit is mainly because we are not in a position to buy a new low emission BMW.

This then led me think about 'generating' income, generating being the key word as we would use in the context of heat or electricity. Money has in itself embodied energy. Stuff has to be done and produced in order to generate it. If you trace the source of all income and follow it back far enough,(even, money on money, trading) you probably arrive at someone digging a hole in the ground and then using vast quantities of energy to produce metal and then something like a BMW or dishwasher, plus the inherent pollution at every collection of resource and manufacturing process. Even the service industry is just another layer away from supporting more product. Of course, this is all by degree and if you take the example of Susan teaching Yoga locally where most walk, the footprint is very light. Mind you she is not going to be able to buy the BMW!

So if you buy a new BMW there is a lot more history and future going on than reducing its current emissions. I would suggest that that its emissions would only be 1 of a factor of 3, the others being the embodied energy of the car and the other the money to buy it. These remain a constant. Wouldn't it be far easier for government to legislate to make all new cars to be of a new low emission level in the same way as the new 6* rating for the thermal efficiency of housing. Mind you that still hasn't been implemented and new houses are still being built to less than a 1* rating. As an aside, the garage at Morertonhampstead, that does MOT's, is not happy because he has to pay £5000 for new equipment to measure the minimal output from the new BMW's. His current machine dosen't even register that there is a car there!

Cuba would be good place to compare Britain with as its probably the only place in the world where the number of cars in existence has gone down and I expect their emissions too. I suspect our overall emissions are actually going up.

Maybe money has a double whammy, with a footprint when you earn it and a footprint when you spend it. I suspect I'm counting the same energy twice.
Still money makes the world go round and that takes some doing!


P.S. If you are fed up with Radio 1,2,3 and 4 and would like a real alternative there is now Resonance FM 104.4 available via the internet. Its is run by London Musicians Collective. I'm especially pleased that the Radio 3 'Mixing It' guys are back at 9pm on a Wednesday with the brilliantly renamed 'Where's the Skill in that'. An eclectic mix of new music.